An Invisible Thread by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski

Full Title: An Invisible Thread: the true story of an 11-year-old panhandler, a busy sales executive, and an unlikely meeting with destiny by Laura Schroff and Alex Tresniowski.

Those living and working In Manhattan, the core of New York, find people begging for money, “panhandlers”, as incessant and irksome as nuisance calls, traffic tie-ups, and electrical outages. Thus, when 36-year-old corporate sales representative Laura Schroff was approached by a pre-teen boy asking her for “spare change”, she walked passed him as she would any similar irritant. Still, after strolling a few blocks away, some inner strand of connection impelled her to turn back to that corner where the boy had made his request.  She waited a moment; the boy had walked on.  Then, he returned to their meeting-point.  

Ms. Schroff believes, as do many of us, myself included, pivotal meetings occur when the lives of both participants are meant to interweave in some definitive way. This link proved true in the interaction between Laura Schroff and the boy she would later come to know as Maurice Mazyck.  While eager to help the boy, Laura Schroff needed to ensure whatever contribution she made would not be spent on illegal substances.  Thus, she offered to treat him to lunch at the place of his choice- McDonald’s.  

While far from the optimal source of nutrition, the boy’s gorging of its instantaneous, fast, deep-fried food, followed by a desperate request for seconds, confirmed what Laura had already surmised. This boy was a malnourished child, not a conniving hustler. Through time, and various vicissitudes, the friendship between Laura and Maurice evolved.  Despite their apparent differences, Laura soon came to realize the similarities in their backgrounds.

Maurice’s father had left the family when Maurice, a young child, still viewed him as the icon of power and strength he appeared to be.  Laura’s dad, though continuing to provide some financial support, was emotionally absent, due to his drunken brutalities.  An especially horrific rage resulted in his smashing, deliberately, one after another, each of her brother’s hard-won sports trophies.  The aspiring athlete watched, transfixed, while the symbols of his triumphs were erased by this savagery, his hopes for the future wrecked, never to be reborn or resurrected.  

As Laura and Maurice’s friendship progressed, she allowed him to stay by himself in her apartment on some afternoons, while she was at work.  This meant , for the first time, Maurice could watch TV, read a book, take a nap, have a sandwich, or do whatever he chose, with no adult to instill guilt.  Yet, Laura set boundaries early on. She pledged to Maurice she would tell him just once, the slightest violation of trust would put an immediate end to their friendship.  
This trust, never offered before by anyone, seems to have change Maurice’s priorities from the basic wish to acquire whatever he could by whatever means, to a desire to respect the trust which Laura bestowed upon him.
  
The tie between Laura and Maurice went through difficult times. Marriages on both sides changed the nature of their connection. Still, with bouts of silence created by Maurice’s tendency to drop out of touch, their bond did not end.  His silence was motivated by the fear his mistakes might impel Laura to abandon and spurn him. Still, their friendship continues.  As decades pass, age differences between generations tend to diminish, often to the point of insignificance.  Hence, Laura and Maurice share an ongoing bond with each other’s families.  Their friendship has given both of them strength to overcome the ongoing challenges of every life, with the acceptance of risk and renewal.  Without this openness, given appropriate safeguards, life can lose its adventure in living. 

My Father’s Places by Aeronwy Thomas

Aeronwy Thomas

My Father's Places: A Portrait of Childhood by Dylan Thomas' Daughter by Aeronwy Thomas  

Like many children of famous parents, Aeronwy Thomas’ growing years were exposed to a sometimes disconcerting degree of public view.  Though living only until age thirty-nine, the immortal work of Dylan Thomas has become a milestone of literature.  Hence, it is saddening to learn that, during his daughter’s childhood, much of her father’s income was evoked by “begging letters” to those affluent and eager to invest in superb writers.

  
While appreciative of this crucial support, it sometimes demanded a level of groveling which could generate rage.  Fortunately, although recognized as the offspring of a celebrity, the Thomas’ children were well-grounded in reality by a number of relatives living nearby, neighborhood friends, and through becoming students at their local school. Yet, familial ties were often plagued by volcanic turbulence.

In order to maintain awareness of Dylan’s work, trips abroad were essential. Though sometimes traveling as a family, Dylan took several promotional tours alone, most often to America. Such solo trips, difficult for any couple, proved doubly hard given Dylan’s tendency to philander.  Opportunities are always abundant for the famous in any sphere. In addition, society hostesses, if treated well, were glad to provide financial largess.  During his last days, Dylan claimed these liaisons were substitutions for closeness to his cherished wife, Caitlin. Still, this brought little comfort to Caitlin, wounded by his infidelities, and humiliated by their consequent scandals.

Both Dylan and Caitlin were firebrands.  Eruptions, often including fisticuffs, seem to have been a part of that passion which kept their love lively.  Perhaps their absorption with one another, joined with the needs of Dylan’s work, to some extent, excluded their children.  Often Aeronwy refers to her father and mother as “Dylan” and “Caitlin”. 

Still, tenderness and affection pervade this memoir.  In the most authentic sense, Dylan and Caitlin were symbiotic.  True, she sometimes had to lock him inside the shed for his designated hours of writing.  Still, had she not done so, some of his most magnificent works might not have come to fruition?  Thus, these two warring spirits fed and nurtured each other. 

The Forbidden Zone by Mary Borden

Mary Borden lower center 

The Forbidden Zone: A Nurse's Impressions of the First World War by Mary Borden 

This memoir of a nurse during WWI is often almost too painful to read.  Still, in her preface, she says she has softened the edges of some realities in that, even after decades, they would cause her too much anguish to write or to inflict upon readers.  The title refers to an area in France deemed “the forbidden Zone”  because of its closeness to the line of fire.  Yet, Ms. Borden persevered from 1914 until 1918, travelling to whatever section she was assigned, always within this zone.

First published in 1929, it was rediscovered and re-published in 2008.  Perhaps interest has been reawakened due to current wars with their rising death tolls, and veterans returning with physical and emotional scars.  Part of the sadness and horror contained in this book results from the awareness that, at this very moment, young men and women are being wheeled into military hospital wards, having lost arms, legs or at times, even faces.

Despite a century’s accumulation of knowledge regarding drugs and procedures, doctors and nurses are all too often powerless to do more than palliate suffering.  Indeed, many of Ms. Borden’s experiences may be shared by her modern counterparts. Frequently, war nurses were the last human beings a soldier was likely to see before dying.  Thus, one nurse was asked to come to a bedside, only to be told by a gravely injured young man that he never before had killed a woman.  This sentence, unexplained, touched her as a plea for absolution for one or more acts which shamed this young man to the depths of his being.
  
A slightly longer encounter occurred with a man who was frantic and desperate to die.  The greatest irony of such wars is the permission, indeed encouragement to kill anyone, despite gender or age, whose life proves in any way inconvenient.  This endorsement, however, ends at one’s self; a failed suicide attempt resulted in being shot after having been court martialed.

Here a middle aged man, doubtless joining the army after younger draftees had been killed, having shot himself in the mouth, survived and was brought to the hospital.  There, though well aware of his fate, the doctors struggled to save his life, lest his death caused a flurry of similar efforts.  Finally, Ms. Borden and her fellow nurses agreed to “forget” to force him to wear those bandages he continued to rip away from his wounds.  A moment came when, though no word dared be spoken by either side, his eyes voiced his gratitude.  Two days later he died.

Parts of this book are given an added immediacy by being written as poems, addressing the reader as if he or she were a friend.  One of the most evocative states:  “Listen; you can hear how well it works: there is the sound of cannon and of the ambulances bringing the wounded, and the sounds of the tramp of strong men going along to fill the empty places. Do you hear?  DO you understand? It is all as it should be.

Final Truth by Donald Gaskins and Wilton Earle

Full Title
Final truth: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer by Donald Gaskins and Wilton Earle.

Having read thousands of books throughout my life, none has left me feeling as troubled and disturbed as this uncensored account by a journalist of the memoir of serial killer Donald Gaskins known as “Pee Wee Gaskins”.
   
Wilton Earle gained Gaskins trust by listening to his account of his crimes with objectivity and a complete lack of judgment.  This approach allowed Gaskins own voice to be heard, not only by Earle, but by later readers.  Earle’s account is based on tapes recorded by Gaskins as an inmate on death row, during a period of fifteen months, sometimes with Earle present, and at other times by himself in his cell.
    
Given the imminence of his death due to multiple convictions, Gaskins felt no need to censor his account of his past, including his joy in inflicting pain and slow, horrific deaths upon his countless victims. His sole, nonchalant defense of his acts lay in his statement that he had been born “with a special kind of mind which gives myself permission to kill”. 

Although his mother seems never to have beaten or been verbally cruel to him, after her husband left her, she seems to have ignored his needs in order to maintain relationships with a series of men who he was told to regard as “step-daddies”. In fact, so brief was the stay of many of them that Gaskins simply addressed them as “Sir”, rather than bothering to learn their names.  The majority of these men were bullies.  After Gaskins death post-mortem examinations indicate that, at some point, he was struck on the head, or struck down, by one or more of his mother’s partners, to the point of developing brain injuries.  

When Gaskins left home his primary male influences were those eager to teach him the best strategies for breaking and entering homes, and the most valuable items to steal.  Juvenile offenses led to reformatories where Gaskins learned that respect was based on control, rooted in violence.  Lessons learned in this setting prepared him for the criminal career which would end in his death.  By degrees, he became more deeply involved in the prison environment.
  
Between prison sentences, strategizing his next crime, he resorted to the advice given him by his mentors in the federal prison system, and then acted upon this knowledge. The most painful aspect of this book lies in Gaskins’ lack of remorse, even when killing his niece, for sheer gratification.  

At the end of his account, I felt frustration at my own and societies lack of solutions to the waste of so many lives, including that of the twisted Donald Gaskins.  The correction system, as it stands, is a quagmire of quicksand.  The deeper any offender sinks, the greater his knowledge becomes, until he is almost certain to drown in its depths of hopelessness.  If only a way could be found to halt this process before it becomes overwhelming.  

Heartbreaker: A Memoir of Judy Garland by John Meyer

Judy Garland

The Judy Garland who emerges from these pages is hard to like. True, her addictions had, by her early forties, reached a point where carefully monitored weaning would have been necessary in order for her to begin to recover.  Still, towards the end of her needlessly brief life, she seems to have made no effort to seek clinical intervention.  When song-writer John Meyer met Judy Garland, he had written one well-received song and had aspirations to write others.  At the same time, despite their age difference, he found Ms. Garland captivating and delightful-indeed, he asked her to marry him, and she agreed, but they never tied the knot.

Her voice had kept its wellspring of beauty.  What was needed, Meyer felt he could provide:  enough motivation to renew both her vocal strength and the career she had begun to spoil by her reputation as an unreliable addict. The two felt sure they could create a union interwoven of love and abilities.  All the right components were there, but by her early forties, Judy Garland had become almost wholly egocentric and manipulative.  

Judy’s pleasure in stealing from fans I found truly despicable.   Beyond arriving insultingly late for well-paid-for performances, she took any item she fancied from unsuspecting fans, too bedazzled to suspect or accuse.  By way of one example, once in a restaurant, Judy and John began chatting with a couple they had never met before.  Towards the end of the evening, having asked to borrow the woman’s spectacles to check the time, Judy asked, “Can I have these?” claiming they worked better than did her own.  The woman looked distressed, but was shocked and intimidated into consenting.

Still, Judy Garland was often endearing.  Her need for Meyer’s love could be poignant in its intensity.  Fear of forfeiting his affection brought out the almost childlike warmth which had not been jaded. Meyer explores various aspects of their relationship in a tender and compassionate way.  As he concludes, it is heartbreaking that such a magnificent talent was squandered by ingrained dependence on pills and alcohol, joined with the expectations of stardom.  In time, she allowed this power to exploit friends, lovers and audiences with sparse shame or remorse.
  
Ultimately, the book recounts a woman who, over-all, had lost both her path and perspective. In terms of social commentary, Meyer’s book reflects the damage done to those adored from such a young age as to view themselves above the ethics and fairness of human dealings.  

The Happy Hoofer by Celia Imrie

As often happens, life took Celia Imrie on a different path than she intended. 
Being told twice she was “too large” to be a ballet dancer, she instead began working as a tea-girl and gopher for theatres.  In time, she was offered minor roles, leading to ones of greater significance.  Hence, during a long career, she saw the human side of many theatrical greats, such as John Gielgud, Judi Dench and Glenda Jackson.

This book will delight those who enjoy reading anecdotes about such celebrities.  

One of these addresses the fairness and generosity of Ms. Jackson. During the run of a stage play or the making of a film, it was protocol for major stars to eat in the most elegant restaurants, while minor actors and the crew were expected to subsist on the basics. Glenda Jackson would have none of that; cast and crew dined as a group, with complete equality. 

Celia Imrie also discusses her various illnesses and accidents, including her attack by a shark on what she thought to be a wonderfully deserted beach.  In addition, she discusses her choice to have a child without a relationship or marriage, who she succeeded in bringing up on her own.  
This memoir has its bright, happy moments along with some deeply poignant ones.